What is SMILE?
The winner of a national call for projects*, SMILE(SMart Ideas to Link Energies) an inter-regional collaboration between the Brittany and Pays de Loire regions.
Officially launched in the spring of 2016, the SMILE project is part of a plan for the operational implementation of energy transition and sustainable growth on a regional and national level.
Its aim: accompany and support the deployment of a series of important regional industrial projects connected to smart grids (smart energy systems) to promote skills on a European and Worldwide scale. The thing all smart grid projects have in common: on the one hand improving the balance between the production of renewable electricity and its consumption and on the other hand introducing data flow management hubs (internet of energy).
SMILE is an association presided over by the Brittany and Pays de la Loire regions and coordinated jointly by the regional agencies of both territories: Bretagne Développement Innovation and Pays de Loire Territoire d’innovation. The main goal of SMILE is to create interaction between companies developing solutions and the territories wishing to roll out smart grid technologies, in order to create a region wide smart grid.
A comprehensive ambition with concerns covering a range of themes
Across the territory, SMILE has brought to light some key themes which define the scope of the various projects supported by the association. Here are some of the most noteworthy themes:
- Smart territories: cities, rural and suburban territories, islands (Ushant and Yeu).
- Micro-grids and community self-sufficiency (residential buildings, smart activity centres, smart ports, smart campuses, smart neighbourhoods…).
- New models for producing and managing energy in buildings, in particular industrial and tertiary buildings.
- Deployment of new integration models over the renewable energy networks and markets.
- Promoting awareness and helping to control demand response.
- Energy data management hubs, with the challenges of interoperability and cyber security.
- Electric mobility: deployment of carbon free mobility (in particular infrastructure networks for recharging electric vehicles), new models for producing and managing the energy for these vehicles.
- Flexibility and network services on a local and regional level.
* Deployment of the New Industrial France Plan for Smart Electric Networks/Industrial solutions for sustainable towns
SMILE'S AMBITIONS
Make the Grand Ouest one of Europe’s leading Smart grid territories with sustainable and exportable solutions.
Bring together the stakeholders of the territory and the French smart grid industry, to work on collaborative projects for deploying new solutions for energy production and management.
Contribute to the emergence of high level economic and industrial dynamics in our two regions.
Boost the internet of energy by deploying smart grids, a means of decentralising the energy system.
Smart Grids are also.
Smart grids are at the crossroads between electric, information and communication technologies.
What makes them different is their capacity to combine 2 specifics: optimise the existing networks by making them smarter while creating autonomous and adaptable mini-networks…
Find out more about smart grids
DO YOU HAVE A PROJECT? AN IDEA? JOIN THE SMILE DYNAMIC!
While the SMILE project aims to optimise energy transition in the Brittany and Pays de Loire regions, it is also a fantastic vehicle for economic, technological and human opportunities in which everybody has a role to play. For companies: a potential booster for development; for local authorities: a concrete point of reference for imagining the future.